Sunday was a beautiful late summer day, a little cooler than usual. The number of cicadas is decreasing these days; the end of Ghost Month was being celebrated at a paper temple set up by the restrooms nearby as I exited the subway station at the park. I’ve always felt like the station should be named the 2/28 Park Station rather than NTUH Station, as the most significant exits are in the park, but people seem to think that hospitals are a trump card as far as station naming goes.

NL Guy was wrestling with one of the students who seldom comes to practice, while Teacher X instructed Little Mountain Pig on some of the finer points of sword form. Being rather rusty in the sword department myself, I joined in. I can still do the form, but, after going through the whole thing with Teacher X, the point was driven home for me that there are many areas in which I need work. Teacher X is going to the US for his calligraphy course soon, possibly next week, and we’ll have a month or so without him before he returns in November.

After Teacher X left I did some tuishou with Little Qin, who told me that the body can be divided into Yin and Yang portions, which change depending on how you use them. For some reason this struck a chord with me, one of those “Oh!” moments that has an immediate and apparent effect on one’s performance. It got me thinking of pandas for some reason, possibly the visualization of one’s body being covered in shifting patterns of black and white.

The more you use this, he said, the less you need your hands. Little Qin discourages the use of palms in tuishou, as “Anyone can use their palms to grab and push and pull; what we need to learn to do is use everywhere else.” As Master Zheng said, “Your whole body is a hand.” We transferred the idea to swordwork as well, with the edge of the sword being generally a yang part and the flat part the yin, but not always: Little Qin demonstrated how each can be used as the other, and told me the story of Master Zheng disarming a Japanese samurai by simply controlling him instead of fighting him directly. It was all quite neat.

I was the first one of our group at the park last Sunday when I arrived at 10 a.m. The others didn’t begin to arrive until half an hour later, so I spent the time warming up and running through empty-handed and sword forms. It was promising to be a hot day, but at least the leaves are still on the trees, providing some shade. Mr. V and NLguy are quite chummy these days; they spent the entire time wrestling each other; I guess it makes sense as their approaches have always been similar.

Teacher X was telling me how he would have to leave for his calligraphy class a week early due to the October holiday rush when Little Mountain Pig called on me to practice with a guy from outside our group. He was surnamed Liu, in his late 50’s and small. I started slow, taking Little Qin’s advice to see if I could push my opponent up to the point of defeat and then stopping. At first I though that Mr. Liu was taking the same tactic, but it appeared that he was getting bored with all the pussyfooting around, and his moves became a lot less smooth, exerting a constant, rigid force.

This became quite tiring, but I was still curious, so we kept at it. Then the quick, hard shoves began, and it was NLGuy all over again. Mr. Liu seemed frustrated as well, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like practicing with me very much. Oh, well. It’s like LM Pig says, with tuishou it seems that you’re either interesting in learning or winning.

I practiced tuishou with Little Qin, who always has some interesting move or observation to impart. Usually it turns out to be something I never would have thought of or guessed, some move that completely doesn’t make sense and yet works flawlessly. “Yi jin dang chang,” he said, which roughly means putting everything into the action. Afterwards we did some swordplay, with me switching hands when I got tired. The practical work is good for me, the equivalent of tuishou with swords.

Little Qin tried to dispel me of my notion of studying taichi staff before scimitar. “Sword takes 10 years of practice,” he told me, “and scimitar three after that. Staff should only be a year.” In any case, it’s still a bit early to be thinking that far ahead, but I still have my doubts about the scimitar. A military man, Little Qin compared sword to a light tank while “the scimitar is a heavily armed helicopter.” To be honest I’m not sure what to make of that. Little Qin often says things that go way over my head; I just file them away in the hope that I might realize what he was talking about some day.